(Not actually Jenny – she was too shy for a portrait shot).
She’s dressed well, softly spoken, and the light of cheerful intelligence is veiled behind a polite reserve.
She certainly doesn’t want an article written about herself, but is happy to tell me how her new role, in a tiny independent newsroom on the central north coast, has brought her unexpected joy.
Jenny Rowden is a typical volunteer. A retired teacher, she’s been helping out by working in an op shop, tutoring HS students, hospice support and supporting Cruisin’ the Coast – enabling housebound folk to enjoy the wind in their hair.
Her parents were both abandoned as kids, and carried all the baggage that entails, but it gave Rowden insights that means her heart constantly goes out to those on the margins, struggling with isolation, loneliness, DV, mental illness or financial struggle.
Her radar is alert to the quiet achievers in the community who rarely receive, or seek, any acknowledgement for supporting others doing it tough.
These quiet, unassuming people – the active ones focused on service to others without any thought of reward or thanks, are the people she’s now meeting regularly. She has to meet them because, despite her retirement and busy life, she’s accidentally become a journalist.
The CCV team (Jenny in the middle).
The Central Coast Voice is a local community newspaper that operates online and produces a monthly newsletter (30+ pages), distributed by volunteers around the central north coast region. It looks unassuming – just another community rag with ads for local services, sports news, community achievements, short pieces on local history and upcoming events.
But it’s a mistake to assume that’s all it is.
The Central Coast Voice is a newsroom – a vital community hub where Rowden innocently wandered in and offered to ‘help with admin’, then found herself happily chasing down leads, doing interviews, taking photographs, linking charitable groups to charitable funders, working with school students, and doing the thing that introverts avoid – engaging in multiple deep conversations with many people in any given month.
Active community members often feel insignificant, even as they unpack boxes of donated goods for an op shop, or help older people mobilise outside their homes, or support local sports and cultural events, or volunteer to help others despite little to no funding other than their two hands and willing spirit.
They tell her they’re reluctant to talk about themselves because what matters is the thing they do, the people who need their help.
But Rowden knows these special quiet achievers are the story, and when some of them see their work or group written up, perhaps with a photo, in the Central Coast Voice, their faces light up. They’re not being prideful; they’re experiencing joy that what they care about is being acknowledged. Their work means something. They’re not ‘insignificant’.
And nor is journalistic ingenue Jenny Rowden. Along with her colleagues, she shares the community joy at being appreciated, and she’s chuffed that the top Facebook posts are the ones which highlight community interaction and engagement. As awful as people can be sometimes, we as a community care about our community. We know that the quiet achievers – the busy ones getting the jobs done – deserve our acknowledgement, our recognition of need, and if we can manage it, our support.
Rowden doesn’t know how many hours she works to support the Central Coast Voice and doesn’t care – she’s loving it. Their work starts positive conversations, and connects people to community and vice versa. To Jenny and the others running the Voice, this is priceless. Meeting amazing people, each with an interesting story to tell, is gold.
She’s full of ideas, would love to see more in-depth journalism, and quietly enthuses about students taking an interest in reportage on sports, creative writing, highlighting issues relevant to their peers and even…becoming journalists. Why?
Because good local journalism matters.
The Central Coast Voice is crammed full of information which clearly signals that so much is happening in our communities which is positive and good. It’s all done on the smell of an oily rag, and the goodwill of volunteers, but it is nonetheless an incredibly powerful connector of people, one that reduces isolation by informing and reaching out.
The work that the Central Coast Voice team do cannot be underestimated. Independent community newsrooms are vital, and will only become more so, as they celebrate the quiet achievers – including the most social introvert in Tasmania.
